


the fast forward years

by snsk



Series: the fast forward years [1]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Marriage, baby fever, ft babies!, ft dog!, ft fish!, you name it!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 03:03:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4246995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snsk/pseuds/snsk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>dan, phil, and the years in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the fast forward years

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yungbabe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yungbabe/gifts).



Through a thoroughly shitty Internet connection and across roughly ten thousand miles, Phil says, "I think you're it for me. Probably."

Dan freezes. 

Phil waits patiently until his image starts moving again, complete with staticky curses at the hotel's wifi. "Can you believe we have, like, three baths but a line with this level of suck?" Dan demands of him.

"It's terrible," Phil agrees. "Go down to the fancy lobby of your fancy four-star hotel and get a refund immediately."

"Shut up," Dan says, grinning. "I know I'm a spoiled brat. What was it you were saying?"

"Nothing," Phil decides. For now, anyway. "I've forgotten."

&&&

They get a goldfish after the tour. Dan caves in after Phil changes their iPad lockscreen to an animated sad-looking Nemo with a speech bubble saying: Give Me A Home.

"Phil," he says. 

"Dan," Phil replies absently, eyes intent on his phone. He's playing Evil Apples with Mark and his sister, and Dan doesn't remember Mark's sister's name but Phil will whisper it in his ear the next time they run into her.

"D'you want a clownfish?" he asks.

Phil doesn't look up. "I want a goldfish, you know this."

"Our lockscreen's a picture of Nemo begging for a home," Dan reminds him.

"Oh, yeah," Phil says. "There weren't any goldfish ones under google image search 'cute fish adoption ads.'"

Dan looks at their suitcases, open and mostly unpacked. Looks around at their flat, familiar and lived in and missed. Looks at Phil, cross legged on the ground on a pile of their towels. 

Their.

"Their," he says, accidentally out loud.

"Hmm?" Phil says, typing something furiously and triumphantly out.

"You're changing its water," Dan informs him. "I might accidentally kill it in the process."

Phil smiles at his screen, bumps his shoulder against Dan's leg, doesn't miss a beat. "Sure," he agrees, easy.

 

They name it Winsusan, because Dan wanted Susan and Phil wanted Winston, and because their naming skills haven't developed very much at all since Dil Howlter was created.

Dan informs the Internet that Phil forcefully coerced him into it, and the Internet pretends to believe him. Phil makes a video all about the adoption process and how he begrudgingly won Winsusan's respect in a staring face-off at the pet store, and uploads a four minute long side channel video of Dan feeding Winsusan. 

Dan learns to change the water in a fish tank, because Phil insists that a bowl's too tiny for a growing goldfish. Winsusan never really grows any bigger, but there you have it, Dan regularly cleaning out the algae from the bottom of the huge tank. Phil covers Winsusan's eyes when Dan watches the cooking channel, and  Winsusan's good company when Phil goes home a few days for Christmas. 

"You'll come back with him for Easter?" Phil's mum asks on the phone. 

Dan watches Winsusan swimming around blithely, glances at the other end of the empty sofa, says yes, he'd be delighted.

 

Spring turns to summer, and with it a trip to Los Angeles for a Radio One music event. When they return, they discover Louise has killed Winsusan. Something to do with accidentally adjusting temperatures. Who knew goldfish were so delicate? Not Louise, that's who. 

Phil stares at the empty tank disconsolately. Louise apologizes a hundred times, distraught. Dan stands around and doesn't know who to comfort first.

"It's alright," Phil says eventually. He hugs Louise and they visit Winsusan's grave in her backyard.

Phil mopes about for a day. Dan cleans the algae out one last time. @AmazingPhil's RIP Winsusan tweet gets 50k RTs. The next morning Dan hands Phil his space jacket and informs him that they're going out.

"Winsusan would have loved that," Phil says sadly, staring at an assortment of rocks in the pet store window. He makes to pass it by.

Dan pulls at his jacket and leads him in. 

"Aw, Dan," Phil says, "but I'd feel like we were replacing Winsusan--"

"We aren't," Dan says, stopping at the puppy enclosure. "Also, dogs are statistically more likely to survive two degree drops in temperature."

Phil says, "Dan," and starts smiling, really wide, and Dan says, "Yeah, I'm sure," to his unasked question. They take home what might be the only ugly cocker spaniel on earth, with her strangely ferocious expression and her too-short legs. They name her Rin, just because.

Rin, as an energetically confused and confusedly angry puppy, needs constant care and attention, and also a lot of exercise. Which is how Dan and Phil find themselves in the park near their flat far too much, either trying to keep up with her or waiting for her to finish a poo. Phil takes way too many candid Instagram photos of Dan And Rin Enjoying The Outdoors and Dan's panting in way too many of them. In his liveshows, Dan complains about Rin's pooping schedule and Phil's obsession with this newfangled Training With Treats technique he found online. The Internet indulgently pretends to believe him. 

The training works, against all odds and probably due only to the strength of Phil's will, and Rin's pooping schedule regulates itself. Dan curls up in his sofa crease and Rin turns in a circle three times and curls up next to him. Phil takes pictures and they still end up on Instagram. No one can see her, but Dan's eighth Internet Support Group video has Rin sleeping in the corner of the office. Their filming is strangely soothing to dogs, it seems. She follows the sound of their voices, finds the room, goes straight to sleep.

For Easter, they visit Phil's family for two days. The first night Phil fucks Dan in his old bedroom and Dan gasps and buries his face in Phil's pillow and thinks about Phil jerking off as a teenager as he comes. The second day they decorate Easter eggs and play Monopoly with Phil's little cousin Lily. She bankrupts them both, easy. Before they leave, Phil's mum tells Dan he should come back with Phil more often, and it doesn't sound like a question, so he smiles and says alright, and means it.

When they come back they find out that Louise has thankfully managed to keep Rin alive. When they come back Dan thinks of all the rooms in Phil's house, and the garden, and a tweet about a lawnmower, and says "Hey," and Phil listens, like he always does.

 

Weeks pass, blurring into each other, and they do yet another Big Weekend. They linger, not yet leaving for the hotel after the tents are cleared up on the last day, and Dan flops onto the ground, looks up at the stars and says, "remember--" and Phil pokes him with a stick he's procured from somewhere or the other and points at scratchy letters scraped into the earth, because of course he's remembered the date. Of course he's written it into the earth, just like he wrote it into the snow, just like he rewrites it every day, in the shape of mugs of hot chocolate and post it notes and links of ridiculously cute animal videos set to club music.

"Help me up, I'm getting old," Dan says, after a few moments of staring at the ground, and Phil does, and Dan hip checks him as a thank you, a language they've perfected over the years, and they set off to find a cab.

 

2017 arrives, and with it an offer from BBC to film around the world and get paid, so Dan and Phil, who've been talking about filming around the world but with their own money, don't think twice before saying yes. It's a kind of vlogging format that they're used to and which tv is trying out, so they leave Rin with PJ, who's on a rare break for once, and go to Tokyo again, but also Guangzhou, and Manila, and Sydney, and New Delhi, and Paris, and Stockholm. 

Then they come home, collect Rin from PJ, who hasn't killed her accidentally, and move into the house they spent two years deciding upon.

Rin loves it. Rin loves the garden, the bush which she promptly pees on to mark ownership, her basket near the door. Phil loves the space, the really cool old style attic, the bedroom overlooking the yard. Dan loves the kitchen, the symmetrical, aesthetically pleasing huge windows. They both love the extra room, don't talk about it, paint it a neutral nature-y green.

They make videos from two different bedrooms, forget to mention one's the guestroom. Phil takes his subscribers on the Apartment Tour with Rin bounding at his heels. Dan informs their viewers that they're technically not in the city, at its fringes, and yet the traffic's still as loud, how, thanks a lot London. He tells his twitter followers that they're hopeless at assembling new furniture and that he and Phil should just give up and go back to their flat. The Internet has celebrations in their respective corners and nod along in response to his rants, still pretending to believe him.

They have a not so much housewarming party as a Yeah, come over, this is where we live now kind of barbecue. Barbecue because they have a backyard now, ayyy. Dan's mum kisses him on the cheek, drifts off to speak quietly to Phil, is last seen enjoying sausages with Phil's mum and Louise. PJ comes over to where Dan is tending to the steaks and says, "Look at you, Daniel Howell. Flippin' that meat. Grown up responsibilities and everything." 

"I'd flip you off if my mother wasn't here," Dan says, and PJ laughs.

"I hope you know you both got real lucky," he says, still in that terrible cowboy impression, but Dan follows his gaze. Phil's with Darcy, blowing bubbles into the bright afternoon sky. 

"I know I did," he says.

"S'all I needed to hear," PJ says, gesturing authoritatively at the meat. "Now don't keep a man waitin'."

 

2018 births a litter of puppies, two of which they keep. Haru and Makoto, of course. Phil keeps on at his garden. Dan tries his hand at fixing the fence. They settle into the house, their work, each other. Months pass. Their subscriber count grows. They continue doing radio. They start doing a regular late night tv thing. Phil semi-regularly voices a duck on an animated web series. Their viewers clamor for them to download and film themselves using an app where they've got to bring up a virtual baby. "It's good practice," Phil says while filming the video, an offhand comment which Dan doesn't respond to, but leaves in the final cut.

They turn down an offer for another book, and Dan starts developing an interactive gaming series with PJ. They're busy in 2020, but not too busy to stop relearning each other, over again, in different contexts, a million different nuances. Phil's hydrangeas flourish. Dan manages to use a chainsaw successfully. Haru keeps on leaving muddy pawprints on the hood of their new car. Louise has another adorable, perfect child; they sit out in the waiting room and find each other's eyes, once, enough.

 

2021, Dan, in a YouTube vortex of their old videos with Rin's faithful, tired head on his lap, says, "Hypothetically, if we were to prove Chris' 2013 wedding prediction, you'd need to propose to me sometime within this year. Just a heads up."

Phil yawns, stretches, wanders over. Hooks his chin over Dan's shoulder. "Why am I proposing?"

"Cos you're older, duh," Dan says. "Keep up, old man."

"That's ageist, Daniel," Phil informs him. "I'm deeply offended. I don't feel like proposing now."

"Fine, I'll propose," Dan says long sufferingly.

Phil sniffs indignantly. "Did I say you could? I'm older."

"Philip Michael Lester," Dan says, tilting his head back, grinning, "will--"

"Shut up, shut up!" Phil demands, clapping a hand over Dan's mouth. "Daniel James Howell--"

"I refuse to be proposed to in this offhand, undignified manner," Dan squawks into Phil's hand. He licks it. Phil wipes it rudely on his face. Rin long-sufferingly trots off to her basket before it descends into all-out anarchy.

 

Whoever actually ends up doing it, the following January brings guests from Rawtenstall and Wokingham and Manchester and London, and Dan, who'd placed a Dan vs Phil stake on Phil crying first, weeps on and off intermittently throughout the ceremony. Phil doesn't cry. Phil watches Dan walk up to him with bright eyes and slides the ring on Dan's finger with a steady hand. Phil vows to always love and cherish and protect and tilts Dan's face, the same one he's loved at eighteen and twenty-two and twenty-six and thirty, up to his own and kisses him and kisses him and kisses him as long as they both shall live, amen.

 

They get the pamphlets, download the rest of the information, and devote themselves to reading up. A lady with a stern voice and a Prof McGonagall gaze comes to their house and they show her the neutral green room, the carefully dulled edges of their lounge, the lawn with the swing Dan finally managed to fix up.

She asks: "And you two work together a lot, correct?" 

They nod and agree, sitting across from her with their hands folded in their laps. It reminds Dan a lot of being in the principal's office. 

"When you're both away, attending events, working late-- who will take care of the child?"

"We have friends with children-- Louise has two of her own," Phil says, and Dan inexplicably thinks of Winsusan, and tries not to laugh. "For longer trips, my mum's always happy to come up, and Dan's."

"A good support group, then," she says.

"We'll be cutting back on events and doing more stuff from home, of course," Dan tells her. "We're very fortunate to have careers flexible that way."

He wonders at how formal he sounds. You must be cringing, he tells their child in his head. He realizes he's started talking to it like a tangible thing, a real future person. He can't quite stop the smile from spreading across his face. Phil's a warm constant against his side, they're in the house they worked for, made their home, they're going to have a baby, fingers crossed hope it all works out. The lady, if she sees it, doesn't comment on the sudden appearance of his weirdly huge grin.

 

Their December baby arrives in a flurry of frost and grabbed car keys and Phil nearly tripping over Mako out the door and dying, but the labor itself is a process that's gone very well and you can come and see them now, the nurse tells them out in the corridor. They stare at each other wide-eyed for a moment, eighteen and twenty-three all over again, and then they follow her into the room. 

She's red-faced and looks like a crinkled walnut. Phil talks to Kayla, asks her how she's feeling, tells her all kinds of supportive and gratitude-filled things-- Dan is pretty sure he promises her their pension funds at one point-- so Dan holds her first, cradles her scared and gentle and amazed. 

"Hello," he whispers. She isn't crying, her eyes aren't-- open, per say. She might be squinting at him suspiciously. Dan is so, so scared. He needs Phil to take over before she slips out of her yellow blanket thingy on accident, it could totally happen. "Hello, you tiny, terribly fragile human," he says instead, murmuring it into the small space between them, tempering his fear. "Oh god, the world is so awful, I promise we're going to take such good care of you," and Isla Lester-Howell slips her foot free from the yellow blanket swaddle, waves it confusedly just because she can, and Dan is instantly, thoroughly hers, forevermore.

Isla then proceeds to keep them up for six months straight, or that's what it feels like anyway. Milk and nappies and fever scares and hurting her mouth on the plastic bars of her cot, which the doctor says he's never seen a baby do to themselves before and which proves she is truly Phil and Dan progeny. Phil feeds her poor mouth slowly and carefully and says "Promise to never ever ever ever do that again," and Dan wraps the bars of her cot with soft towels and hopes this isn't, like, going to be a metaphorical thing with her. Their tendency for erratic sleeping schedules works in their favor for once; Phil gets up earlier than Dan and Dan takes many of the night shifts. 

One early dawn, blinds open, sky turning a strange and wonderful shade of purple, Dan rocks Isla to sleep in his arms. She defiantly hiccups at him, but those are slowly starting to trail away as well. 

"You look terrible," Phil says, hushed, from the doorway to the still-green room.

"Thank you so much, Phil," Dan murmurs pointedly. "Why-- why're you filming us, dingbat."

"'cos you're probably the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," Phil tells him, matter-of-fact. "Four am, hair a curly mess, shadows under your eyes the size of fists, and you've got our daughter in your arms, and you're definitely the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life."

Dan attributes the sudden choked-up feeling in his throat to lack of sleep. Isla's last, tiny hiccough dies an early death, and her dark eyelashes flutter in sleep, like her papa's words were all she needed. 

"Put the camera down, dingbat," Dan says. "Come here and help tuck our baby in, and then kiss me for those cheesy, terrible lines."

"You should wake me up at night more," Phil says. He smooths Isla's hair, helps pull a sock on. They watch, wary. She doesn't wake. Dan misses the sunrise because he's busy kissing his stupidly lovely husband as the first rays slant across their baby daughter's room. It's not a very big price to pay.

 

They have a low-key argument about showing Isla to the world.

Dan says, not yet, not yet. Phil says, how long can we keep this up, Dan-- I'd rather we do it on our own terms, set our own rules, than have a gossip blog expose us. Dan scoffs, when has the internet ever played by our rules? and Phil sighs, they're going to find out sooner rather than later. Dan insists, she's too young, it's too soon. Phil says, quietly, I'd rather she not be exposed, like some dirty secret.

They don't fight. They've actually never truly fought, even at their worst; not the yelling and the throwing stuff kind anyway. It's always been closed doors, pointed silences, at their very worst cutting remarks on-camera too jagged to count as banter. But they're tense about it for a few days, until Dan goes out to the garden where Phil's half-heartedly poking at his begonias. 

"I love you," Dan says, has been getting better at telling Phil, here in their own space as they age and grow together.

He senses rather than sees Phil's smile at his begonias. Phil pokes at him with the spade, instead. They compromise. The children they have, they will tell anecdotes about, will post selected pictures of, but anything leaked and unwanted will be off the internet forever. They tell this to the fans, take the time to talk to and explain it to them, ask their help in moderating what people say about their children online. It goes a lot better than 2012 did. Dan has the uncomfortable feeling he should have taken Phil's advice back then as well.

"I hate it when you're right," he informs Phil, watching an Instagram post of Isla chasing Rin garner a thousand likes, two thousand, three thousand.

"I feel like I've been right about a lot of things since we've met," Phil says cheerily.

"But when you're outright right," Dan insists. "Especially later, when I know I'm wrong. That eats away at me. My soul resents it."

"Whatever it is I was right about, I didn't mean it," Phil says solemnly. 

"I appreciate it," says Dan. 

"You've been right about a few things too," Phil tells him, watching Isla pat at Rin cheerfully, crawl over to them. He opens his arms for her, easy. Dan's heart does this thing where it sort of seizes up on him, in a good way, not a due a cholesterol check way.

 

Alexander Lester-Howell is adopted two years after his sister; he's eight years old and he's got big brown eyes and a toy minion which he brings with him like a safety blanket and he follows Phil around constantly, watches over Isla like a faithful sheepdog. After three and a half weeks, Dan murmurs to Phil late at night in their bed after an hour of restless worrying, "does Alex not-- like me?"

"Hmm?" Phil says sleepily, turning to face Dan, absent-mindedly patting his hip. He's still got a smudge of orange Magic Marker near his eyebrow from where Isla had somehow gotten ahold of one, waved it around wildly, and nearly taken Phil's eye out. "That's-- why would you think that?"

"He likes you better," Dan says, quite realising how that sounds coming out of his mouth. He sighs. "I don't know. He just. He's vaguely distant with me. Too polite. Not that that's not a good thing. Politeness. But Phil. You know what I mean."

Phil struggles his other arm out from between them and rests it on the pillow above Dan's head. He plays idly with Dan's hair. "You could try having some time alone with him," he suggests. "Just you two. You haven't really. Me and Isla've always been around."

"Like, he likes that whole astronomy deal," Dan says. "I could take him to the centre."

"Make a whole day of it," Phil agrees. "Make sure he knows he's wholly and unconditionally wanted and loved. Not by us. I mean by us, of course. But by you specifically." He traces his thumb down the bridge of Dan's nose. "And you need to moisturize."

"Or he might just not like me," Dan says, trying for offhand joking, failing miserably.

Phil flicks him where he knows Dan's dimple resides. "I very much doubt that, but if it comes to it, you'll win him over. That Howell charm. 100% effective."

Dan sniffs. "You have to say that. You're married to me."

"And if I weren't I'd husband you up in no time," Phil says, making no sense, and pushes his thumb into the dimple, now full-fledgedly dented. "You know? I'd do it all again." He hums two, three seconds of a song Dan's long forgotten.

"I appreciate that, it's good to hear you don't think you've made a terrible mistake," Dan says. He makes to bite at Phil's thumb. "Go back to sleep, you fruit loop, stop poking at me."

"Okay," Phil says peaceably. He runs his fingers through Dan's hair when Dan settles his head onto his chest. "Fall Out Boy."

"Thank you. God, it was gonna bug me all night."

"I know," Phil tells him. Dan knows he did.

 

Dan takes Alex to the space centre on Saturday, Phil waving goodbye with Isla balanced on his hip. 

"She's got a purple one now," Dan warns, opening the driver's door. "Seatbelt, please." Alex pulls at it agreeably.

"How did she-- where did that even come from," Phil demands. Isla laughs, a happy, manic sound, and dangles the Marker out of Phil's grip. Dan's pretty sure she's going to rule the world one day.

"Or start a revolution," he muses to Alex. "Maybe both. Pick the radio station, bud."

Alex says "constellations, please," when Dan asks him where he wants to start, and he observes the giant starry screens with wide-eyed wonder, holds his Minion up so that he can see, too.

"Hey, does he have a name?" Dan enquires.

Alex looks up at him. "Bob," he says, clutching Bob protectively to his chest.

"That's good," Dan says, a little helplessly. "Sorry I didn't ask before."

Alex considers him for a bit, says, "It's okay." 

They move on to the planets, huge models of them with huge info screens. "Should we go in order?" Dan asks, looking around at the room. "What is these planets' order, anyway? I'm hopeless."

"Furthest from the Sun," Alex tells him. "Can we start with Pluto?"

"Lead the way, buddy," Dan says, and Alex does. His eyes light up at the dusty red craters of the model and he reaches out to touch, pulls back at the last second.

Dan says, "Go on, I'm sure they won't mind."

Alex points at the PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH emblazoned on the wall.

"I didn't see that," Dan hmphs, and because Pluto looks so inviting, and because he's still mentally Alex's age, let's be real, he smooths a hand over it.

"It's not dusty," he tells Alex. "They lied."

Alex looks around and up at Dan and at Pluto and pats it quickly. "They lied," he agrees, and there's a real, brief smile there.

"Did you know that Saturn has seven rings?" Alex volunteers. 

"Greedy," Dan says. "Leave some for the others, why don't you."

Alex's brow furrows, and he looks like he can't help it when he says, "That's not funny."

"Listen, I'm glad you've started calling me out on it," Dan says. "Like Phil says, there's only so much one can take."

Alex gazes at him again, and sort of grins, and points at the next planet.

They have ice cream for lunch. Ice cream and fries. "Did I ever tell you about the time I went vegan?" Dan says.

"What's vegan?" Alex asks.

"It's a whole thing," Dan says. "Like vegetarian, but you can't eat anything that's not from a vege. No meat, obviously, but not even eggs."

"Hmm," Alex says, considering. "But why would you?"

"It's supposed to be healthy," Dan says doubtfully. "Can't say I felt any better... I gave it up after a few weeks. I couldn't take the smell of Phil making omelettes in the morning. Also he basically force fed me a cupcake. I think he did it on purpose. One of these days I'll find out the truth."

"Not even eggs," Alex repeats, obviously still shocked. 

Dan nods sadly.

They eat their ice cream in shocked and companionable silence for a bit.  

"Alex?" Dan says. Alex looks up at him. "You know, me and Phil, we're very happy to have you in our lives. And we promise you-- I promise you unconditional love. And acceptance and support and care. But love. Always."

Alex stares up at him solemnly. Alex considers him for several moments. Alex nods once, says, cautiously, "Okay," and eats a scoop of his ice cream.

Alex tells him about all the Sun after lunch. There are twenty-eight facts in total, and Alex has memorized them all. Dan's allowed to hold Bob as Alex tries out the rocket ship simulator, and Dan thinks he might have a shot at his son liking him after all.

 

Weeks spill over into months, and Phil's roses flourish, and Isla's first word is "burst," which Dan insists is gibberish and is actually "da," two weeks later, and upon which Phil maintains that Dan has no faith in their daughter's vocabulary. Alex joins ballet, and Dan goes overboard with the movies and musicals and documentaries he downloads and makes the family watch. You're embarrassing me, Dad, Alex complains as Dan makes a poster for his first recital, and Dan grins big, feels accomplished. 

PJ comes over for a few weeks, brings Chris along. They make a video that lowkey breaks the old YouTube fantastic fandom, and Isla clings onto Unca Peesh until Dan gets a little jealous and PJ laughs at him and Chris and Phil teach Alex the rules of Muggle Quidditch on the lawn. Phil's brother and his wife and kids come up next, and Dan watches from the window as they play with his own, shares a drink with Cornelia and starts dinner. When Phil and Martyn come back from their food gathering expedition slash brotherly bonding time, Phil slides his hand onto Dan's waist, under his shirt, as Dan stands at the stove.

"Hi," Phil says. "I missed you. I'm quite fond of you."

"Did you stop by the pub," Dan says, amused. "I'm quite fond of you too, isn't that a lucky break."

"No," Phil says. "Martyn was saying-- we were reminiscing a bit, and he asked if I remembered me calling him up to mope at him for an hour while you were off with your family in India."

"That was ages ago," Dan tells him, and then, delightedly, "I can't believe you moped."

"You know I moped," Phil says, laughing. "I made videos of me moping. Videos you still mock me for."

"I don't mock," Dan insists. "That makes me sound like a terrible human. I tease. Gently. Because I love you."

Phil's eyes are bright. "But you do remember, right?" he asks. "That period of time when the line was terrible and the Skype calls weren't enough and when I wanted to be able to reach out and touch so bad it hurt. You remember."

"I do," Dan agrees. He leans a bit into Phil's touch, a quiet language they've both grown wonderfully, achingly fluent in. "Why?"

"Nothing in particular," Phil says maddeningly, and smiles sudden and real, and nuzzles his nose into Dan's shoulder a moment. "I missed you. I'm very glad I'm home."

 

End of 2026, Dan and Phil go back to Tokyo, leave Alex and Isla with Louise and her husband. They walk amongst the cherry blossoms, pay a visit to Duncan and Mimei and their son, and stare up at Mount Fuji until Phil says, Dan come on, and Dan says, Phil we're old for crying out loud, but gets up and follows Phil anyway, as usual, as always. They film with one hotel bed showing, but then they have two kids together, so. Dan's been more concerned.

When they return they find out Louise has managed to keep both aforementioned kids alive, and Isla excitedly tells them about Aunty Wooee's pretty shinies, and Alex explains that Aunty Louise made them up over the weekend with sparkly eyeshadow and took a lot of pictures.

"It's interesting that Aunty Wooee didn't mention this to the parents of the kids she was babysitting," Dan remarks.

"Oh, she did," Phil says. "She said she emailed us the pictures."

"It's interesting that one of the parents was conveniently left not in the know about all of this," Dan comments.

"You know you," Phil said, waving a hand, "and your thing with kids and makeup."

"Can we switch on the radio?" interjects Alex, and Phil smiles, and Isla waves her new stuffed monkey, and Arctic Monkey's eighth album carries them through Dan's indignant mini rant and the rest of the way home.

 

So they have a home, a home that they made and grew and quietly fought for. Years pass and the time doesn't matter and the moments do. They relearn each other, over again, embrace each day, delight in their children. They have ballet practice and doctor's appointments and bake sales and playdates. Alex brings a goldfish home for a class project. Phil stares at it in wide-eyed horror. Dan starts laughing, hanging onto the counter for support. Imagine if 2012 you could see you now, he thinks, amused. He'd be amazed.

A Phil-like voice in his head says, matter of factly, He'd be relieved, and Dan has to concede. He'd be relieved.

 

It's not like Dan doesn't still wonder about the insignificance of mankind's existence, the general meaning of life. He thinks him in another life probably figured it out. In this one, he listens to Alex talk about his horrible geography teacher, attempts a cake with Isla early on a Sunday. He finds purpose in the shape of Phil's smile, sleepily pressed against his collarbone. This universe has done him okay. 

 

Dan's doing one of his biweekly liveshows, and he's talking about Isla's terrible tendency these days to scribble her name on every available surface in the house. Might have to take my mum's good advice and put a  leash on her, he says, and the Internet scoffs and doesn't remotely pretend to believe him anymore, and one user, for a joke, for old time's sake, just to be a shit, asks: hey Dan is phan real 

Dan purses his lips, raises an eyebrow. In the background, Phil warns: "You guys know Daddy's busy, don't you dare go in there!" followed by the thud thud slap of running footsteps, growing louder, and a dog's excited barks.

Dan shrugs, grins. "I'm sure I don't know what you're on about," he says, just as the door flings open and Isla bounds in, landing herself into Dan's lap with an oomph, Alex flinging himself onto the bed a heartbeat later. "See you soon, Internet," he tells them, setting his daughter upright, his husband making apologetic faces at the camera from the doorway. "Duty calls."

&&&

Dan squints at him suspiciously. Phil wonders if even a video feed that's mostly blurred pixels can't mask the fact that he's a terrible liar. Dan says, "I'll cut you some slack, I know you just turned, gasp, 23. Ancient." He makes a big show of checking his watch. "Hey, it's already the 12th," he remarks, trying and falling far short of nonchalant.

Phil says: "Our first Valentine's Day, and you'll be on another continent."

Dan shrugs: "That's okay. We won't do anything this year, double celebrate the next one."

There's a slight pause.

Dan says, "--okay, wait, was that like, incredibly presumptuous," at the same time Phil asks, "what does a double celebration entail? Twice the amount of flowers, or bigger flowers the size of your head--"

Dan covers his face with his hands, starts laughing, and through a shitty Internet connection and 11 509 kilometers, Phil knows: you're it for me, definitely.

**Author's Note:**

> did you know i wanted this done by dan's birthday. ha
> 
> Tumblr @snsknene


End file.
